After 3 Months, U.S. Jury Gets Airliner-Bomb Conspiracy Case

A Federal jury yesterday began deliberating whether three men devised an elaborate scheme to blow up American airliners in Asia early last year.

Judge Kevin Thomas Duffy turned the intricate case over to the jurors after instructing them for more than four hours on the law as it applied to the charges against the defendants, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah. In a separate case, Mr. Yousef also is accused of being the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing.

''You and you alone are the judges of the facts,'' Judge Duffy told the jurors. ''It's up to you to determine credibility.''

The 12 jurors met for only an hour yesterday afternoon before the judge let them recess for the long Labor Day weekend. They will resume deliberations on Tuesday, with a verdict expected later in the week.

Since the trial got under way three months ago, the jurors have heard from more than 50 witnesses and have been shown more than 1,000 exhibits, most of them presented by the Government. The transcript of the trial has run well over 5,000 pages.

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Mr. Yousef, Mr. Murad and Mr. Shah, who were extradited last year from Pakistan, the Philippines and Malaysia respectively, are charged with conspiring in late 1994 and early 1995 to place bombs on a dozen American jumbo jets flying routes between the United States and East Asia, to punish the United States for its support of Israel.